


hunger hours

by BlueFingers (POPP_Writing_Group)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Gift Work, Heavy Angst, Intrusive Thoughts, Medical Trauma, Mental Breakdown, Other, Self-Harm, Unhappy Ending, Violence, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 22:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16504127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/POPP_Writing_Group/pseuds/BlueFingers
Summary: What's the worst thing you can do to a doctor?Take away his ability and need to heal.





	hunger hours

**Author's Note:**

> A friend on tumblr asked me to hurt Ratchet for her birthday, so like, nya
> 
> (assume that Ratchet has been affected by some kind of gas or something that's causing this, it's referenced but only briefly)

**Her lines.**

**They would snap under your grip and her energon would trickle down thick and slippery into your hand plating and it would feel** **_wonderful._ **

“Ratchet?” Arcee says, and turns her head to stare.  

No.   _ No.   _

“I’m fine,” you say, and pick up something,  _ anything,  _ to squeeze until the metal buckles and the trembling in your hands stops.  “More accurately,  _ you  _ are, so get off my table.”

Arcee does.

She turns, the swivel of her head deliberate, to look at you as she walks away.

You crumple the-- thing, something, it doesn’t matter-- in your fist.

You don’t understand what’s happening, but it needs to  _ stop. _

  
  


 

::I really don’t need this,:: Bumblebee protests.

“Optimus specifically requested I check your internal chronometer,” you growl, because he  _ knows  _ this, he’s playing dumb and cute to get out of it, and it won’t fragging work, not on you.  You put your hand on his abdomen to push him down to the medical slab, and

and

and

**The weld mode in your hand.  It would cut deep into that thin, sensitive plating and he would scream through his binary code until his vocalizer cut out a second time.**

You choke, and stumble back, and clutch your hand to your chest as if it would attack Bumblebee on its own.  It won’t. 

**You will.**

“Go,” you snarl at Bumblebee, and wave your hand-- no,  _ no--  _ at him viciously.  “Get out. You don’t need this.”

::Ratchet,:: Bumblebee says, alarm translating all too well through the binary.

“Go!” you roar, and his doorwings slam down tight against his back as he scrambles for the door.

No,  _ no.   _

You stare down at your hand.

_ No, no. _

 

 

“Me?” Wheeljack says, and his expression would probably be something to see if you weren’t so focused on not looking at him.

“Yes, you,” you say, and shove the medical kit at his chest.  He grasps it out of instinct, and you leave it there, trying to to think about how terribly, terribly underqualified he is.  “You had field training with the Wreckers. I need you to repair him.”

Wheeljack glances at Smokescreen’s gashed and dangling knee, and back at you, the panic in his field reaching you even as you continue to avoid eye contact.  “Ratchet,  _ why?” _

“Because I  _ can’t,”  _ you snap, and put your hand on him, shove him.

**His audials would crackle with electricity as you broke them, the wires sparking, and the lighting systems he disabled fracturing with pain he couldn’t disable.**

“Stop,” you breathe.

“Doc,  _ what?”  _ Wheeljack says, stepping away.

“You okay, Ratchet?” Smokescreen says, and his field is genuinely concerned, and he’s leaning forward on that  _ leg-- _

**Him.  You would rip his knee joint apart and leave the pain sensors attached while you dissected it from the outside in.  He would scream until he cried, and it would make no difference.**

“Fix him, Wheeljack,” you gasp, and stumble away, your plans to supervise the ex-Wrecker forgotten.

 

 

“Ratchet,” Optimus says.

It hurts.  You’re burning, you’re  _ hungry, _ and you don’t know why.  Your Prime’s voice cuts through the fog and the chaos like a sword, and you hate him for it.  All you can do is keep hiding.

“The others are. . . worried.”  

You clench your arms around yourself and vent slowly.  

“Ratchet, please.  Come out. Tell me what’s wrong.”

**He won’t expect your attack.**

You shake your helm, pleading.   _ No. _

**He believes you are merely sick.  You know his weak spots, you’ve repaired him often enough.  He will fall, and before he can get up you’ll be at his side, at work.**

“No,” you whisper.  But you already know,  _ yes,  _ you’re already clenching your hands, ready to get up.

“Old friend--”

You leap out, and the hunger twists around your head, and whispers,  **hurt,** and you’re snarling and on top of him, and he stumbles but he doesn’t fall, not yet.  

He cries out, though, because you hurt him, and his blood is on your hands and 

he’s 

_ hurt.   _

He grabs your shoulders and shoves you to the wall and holds you there, away from him, his field terrified and so, so confused.  

You stay there for a while, pinned, forcing the hunger back through the lines and kernels of your processor, and slowly the urge to  **hurt** is replaced with horror and-- and--

“I hurt you,” you say, dumbly, and reach out almost unconsciously to touch the ugly gash.  You can’t, though. He’s holding your shoulders, because he’s trying to keep you away from him, because-- because-- 

“Ratchet, please,” he says, loosening his grip just the smallest bit.  “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing,” you snarl.  Instinct takes over him just long enough to allow you to push his hands away and escape from the room.

And escape is what you have to do.

 

 

“Ratchet, what--” Arcee says, startled, as you wrap your hand around the groundbridge control and punch in coordinates with trembling digits.  

**She would be so easy to break.**

“Arcee,  _ go,”  _ you say, desperately, and for some reason, she does.  She turns and runs away, because she’s  _ scared of you,  _ because-- 

**Because she should be.  Because you will tear her wrist joint apart and the delicate systems will snap under your hand.**

“Shut--  _ up,”  _ you growl, and stumble for the groundbridge.

You make it through just in time to avoid hearing Optimus’ cry to stop.

 

 

You find something.  A ship of some kind.

Crashed, but it’s still intact.  It’ll work. It’ll work for what you have in mind.

You climb inside, and you slam the airlock closed and weld it shut from the inside.  No way for you to get out, not now. You’re trapped.

**No!**

“Yes,” you gasp, because you’re still trying to fight it, still trying to convince yourself that you’re intact, that you’re all right.  But it’s too late, because the hunger is overtaking, it’s  _ you  _ now-- you’re hungry, you’re angry--

But there’s no one here to hurt but yourself.

You scream, and your hands clench against each other, and you pound on the door, trying to escape.  But there’s no escape, not for you. Not when the urge to  **hurt** is crowding out everything that you are.

But you got out.

**No!**

You got out of the base, and the others weren’t harmed.

**Not much.  Optimus’ fuel had been slippery on your hands.**

You shake your head, unable to forget.  The worst part is that the horror is steadily slipping away, just on the edge of reaching.  You can’t touch it anymore, only vaguely observe it-- know that you  _ should  _ be horrified that you tried to kill your Prime, and only able to access a sort of disappointed apathy.

And hunger.  

It’s still there.

You find wiring in the wall and grab it, wrap your hands around it and  _ yank.   _ It comes out, ripping and snapping and flying everywhere, and for a moment your hunger is satisfied, imagining that the wires belong to living, breathing mecha instead of dead metal.

And then you choke and trip over your horror as it crowds back into your throat.  You fall to your knees, purge your tanks. 

The energon that comes up is dull blue, not bright like fuel that’s been running through a mech’s lines only seconds before.  You scrape angrily at it with your hand, but it’s already congealed to the floor.

And the hunger is worse.

**You could have done much better.  You could have taken advantage of Optimus’ confusion and tackled him to the ground, transformed your blades and shredded his faceplating until even his mask couldn’t cover the damage.**

“Stop, please, stop,” you say, under your breath, mostly a chant by now, meaningless and useless.

**You’d see how much pain he could take before he’d start screaming.  Imagine him, that voice, screaming in pain that you** **_created._ ** **And you missed your chance!**

“No,” you moan, trying your best to fight it back. 

But the realization that you don’t  _ want  _ to fight it back anymore is the most terrifying thing of all.  

Focus.  Focus. You’re a medic.  You save people, you heal them.  You-- You--

**You destroy them and rip them apart.**

“No, _ please,”  _ you sob.  It doesn’t mean anything anymore, but you plead anyway, over and over and over until your vocalizer spits nothing but static.

 

 

It’s four days later, by your chronometer, when the hunger is all that there is left of you.  You  _ want  _ this, and you hate the Ratchet that welded the door closed.  You hate the Ratchet that didn’t take the chance to kill his teammates when he could.  You hate him, because he’s all there is to hate in here, in this abandoned shuttle that you’re going to die in.

You growl, and keep picking at your wrist lines.

The feeling of blood spilling over your hands doesn’t satisfy the hunger, no-- you need to hurt someone else, not yourself.  But it makes it less sharp, less immediate.

You find yourself thinking back on what you did to get in this situation, and you find-- with a strange sort of apathy-- that  _ you  _ know, even when the Ratchet of four days ago didn’t.  Obviously, some sort of effect from the gas you’d been sprayed with when entering the abandoned ship you had gone to inspect.  Obviously, a disease of the processor that could have been an easy fix, had you stayed with your team. But you don’t want to be fixed.  You want blood. And you can’t have it!

You curse, and attempt for the hundredth time to melt the welds past Ratchet put on the door.  But he knew what he was doing, and he knew you’d try to escape. So you can’t. 

You’re going to die.

Hate that.

You’re going to die  _ hungry.   _

Hate that even more.

But oh, at least past Ratchet got what he wanted.  Team safe. Not hurt. Well, did he ever stop to fragging think about you?!  About what you wanted? About how your mind is unraveling and your instincts are fighting each other because your medic coding is in clumps of destroyed data?  

Guess the  _ team  _ was more important.  More important to  _ him  _ maybe, but all they are to you are lost targets.  Lost packets of nerve wirings and pain sensors and vocoders that have so many possibilities to scream.  

You groan.

You would take a Vehicon at this point.  

Strangely enough, your mind chooses  _ this point _ to crack.

 

 

 

In the last few moments of your life-- and you’re still enough of a doctor to know that, yes, you are dying-- you’re only aware of the hunger.

If you’d been able to satisfy the need inside you, would you be offlining now?

_ Yes,  _ you know, even though it makes you rage against the fact.  It would have slowed nothing, only made it a little less painful.  As it was, well--

Well, you couldn’t be happy, not when you knew you could have had what you wanted.  But the last vestiges of who you used to be are, well. . . vaguely pleased.

But the pain overrides the wisps of self-righteous nonsense, and you die, cursing who you used to be until the sight and sound and being fades from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
